There were great sweeps of ochre, of gray, of fresh, light green, pointed with black dots of live-oak, and traversed by tortuous lines of indigo where the pecan treed creeks pursued their foiled courses, and troops of little hills grouped themselves about,—­pink, pinkish, purple, purpling blue, white, as they faded from view like the evanescent cherubs in the corner of an old master.  The hills, however, were little only because the stretch was so vast; it was really a broad plafond upon which they had solemnly entered to dance a minuet with the playful shadows of the clouds.  The sky possessed everything.  There was so much of it that existence seemed to have become in a sense a celestial—­or at least an aerial—­affair:  the world was your balloon.

After the third creek-crossing the road ran straight as an avenue through a broad, level reach, and we flew along gayly.  The little mesquite-trees, prim, dainty, and delicate, stood about in seeming order, civilizing the landscape and giving it the air of an orchard; the prairie-dog villages were thrown into a tumult of excitement by our passage; a chaparral-cock slipped out of a bush, stared an instant, pulled the string that lifts his tail and top-knot, and settled down for a race directly under the horses’ feet.  We passed the point of a hill, gained a slight rise, and the ranch was in sight.  It must be confessed that it was not in appearance all that the name might imply,—­not the sort of place for which one starts after having provided one’s self with a navy revolver and a low estimate of the value of human life.  It was, in fact, a very pretty and domestic scene, a little village of half a dozen buildings and a net-work of white limestone and brush corrals.  Shortly I was supping in a neat little cottage, and endeavoring in the usual way to be agreeable to some one in muslin.  In this modern world we change our skies, truly, but not—­not our bric-a-brac.  On the walls of the pretty dining-room one beheld with rising feeling one’s old friends the Japanese fan and the discarded plate still clinging with the touching persistence of the ivy to the oak.  To be sure, there was a tall half-breed Indian moving about with the silent agility of the warpath, but he wore a white apron, and his hideous intention was to fill one’s wineglass.  If the longitude had led me to meditate right buffalo’s hump, “washed down” with something coarse and potent enough to justify the phrase, it was clear that I was painfully behind the stroke of the clock.  Life, good lady, takes an undignified pleasure in arranging these petty shocks to the expectations, which we soon learn to dismiss with a smile.  The cold mutton and ordinaire were excellent, and we had some coffee and a cigarette on the piazza.  The sun was setting far away behind a hill on the other side of the creek.  A soft sound came down the valley from a remote flock of sheep.  A little breeze sprang up and ran tremulously about, shaking the tufted grass and the slim boughs of the mesquites, and putting some question with a wistfully hopeful swish.  Plainly, one could be very much at home here.  The visionary brunette had evidently ranged herself, was living down the reputation of early vivid experiences and successfully cultivating the domestic virtues.